by Sophia James
‘It must be hard on you, waiting so patiently for a man you love with all your heart and soul.’
Sephora could not get the next words out no matter how hard she tried to. Marriage to Richard would not be the ‘all heart and soul’ sort, she thought to herself. It would be far more ordinary than that. She would not see oceans or walk on different lands. She would have babies and get old beside the first man who had ever kissed her and that had been done without the passion she had imagined should have been present. It was as much as she could in all honesty hope for. The thoughts she had had of Francis St Cartmail earlier burned underneath her conscience and she shook them away with fervour.
* * *
Francis spent the afternoon in the alehouses along the banks of the Thames, drinking and listening and asking questions.
One man had heard the name of Clive Sherborne and he dredged up more as Francis offered him a few coins to jog his memory.
‘He always had a young girl with him, his daughter, I think, but he used to administer a sharp slap on her cheek every time she annoyed him and in the end she rarely spoke. He was selling cheap brandy, if I recall rightly, but I was not in the market for any of it as my wife’s the one who does the books and she’s a devout churchgoer. Nothing below the board, you understand, nothing that can lead to any trouble.
‘I do remember, though, Sherborne held two prices for his contraband and I wondered when I heard he’d been killed if it was that which had seen him off. When I did buy on the occasion, for myself so to speak and private like, I remember it was the girl who put the coin in her pouch after counting it out.’
A picture of his cousin was beginning to form. A child dragged into the seedy underworld of contraband and men who would have no qualms in killing her for the gold that she carried. And Sherborne had struck her time and time again when she’d irritated him. No wonder she stood back and away from others. No wonder she peered out at the world with eyes that had seen too much hatred and known too little love.
If she had seen the final hours of Clive Sherborne’s life, had the one who had done away with him known that she would be there, too, her father’s follower, the helper who dealt with the money and counted it out? Would he be wondering right now where she was and if the girl had seen him? Could she be in as much danger as Clive had been, the next mark to ensure eternal silence?
Cold wrath began to settle inside his chest. Anna was his family, his responsibility, and as her guardian he would never let her be hurt. He was crossing off names on lawyer Wiggins’s list, but he was nowhere yet near the name of the one who had killed Clive Sherborne.
‘Not for long,’ he whispered into the semi-darkness as he walked along the cobbled street. ‘One mistake and I will have you, you bastard, and you won’t even know what hit you.’
Chapter Seven
‘Was that not just the most wonderful afternoon Sephora?’ Maria laid her head back against the seat of their carriage and sighed. ‘Mr Adam Stevenage is the most interesting man I have ever met, though perhaps in truth your Lord Douglas is the most beautiful.’
‘Hardly mine.’ Sephora ground the words out and her sister laughed.
‘Every man you have ever met has fallen completely in love with you. Why should he be any different? You only have to forget the boring Marquis of Winslow and want him instead. You used to be braver once. You used to take risks.’
It was true, all that Maria said, but she had become more and more isolated as the years had fled by, careful of this, worried by that, cautious of a temper that Richard was having more and more trouble hiding from her.
But to just let go of everything on a whim and for a man who had not said a word that was even vaguely intimate? Oh, granted, Douglas had smiled at her and taken her hand, but he had almost certainly taken the hands of many other women in his time and more. She remembered the kiss she had observed in the garden at a long-ago ball, Francis St Cartmail’s fingers wound into the hair of the well-endowed woman who had pressed herself to him.
Other worries also surfaced. What was it he had replied when she had asked if he had killed a man? ‘No, not that one.’ The connotation that there had been others he had done away with hung heavily on her thoughts.
Yet Richard no longer represented safety or protection and the sum of all the other parts of him did not amount any more to enough.
Enough?
Everything had changed. Her perception of him, her trust in him, her conviction and faith in the future with a husband who would have simply let her drown.
‘You think too much, Sephora.’ Maria was looking at her when she turned. ‘You overimagine things. I can hear your brain going around and around from here. Why don’t you just...feel and follow your heart?’
‘Because people depend on me. Because Richard has been a friend since as long as I can remember and he would be hurt if...’ She stopped, horrified by the confession she had very nearly given.
‘If you broke off the engagement and told him the truth?’
‘The truth?’
‘That you fell out of love with him a long time ago, but are too kind to say so.’
‘His father is dying...’
‘And you are, too. Inside. Mama and Papa are just so pleased that you are marrying a man who may soon be a duke they fail to see your sadness. Today at the Wesleys you looked different. Francis St Cartmail makes you look happy again and if you cannot see the honesty in that, then...’
Her voice tailed off as she leaned forward, looking out of the window. ‘The Winbury carriage is outside our place. Were you expecting Richard this afternoon?’
Sephora shook her head. Five thirty. Too early for him to be calling for the evening and she had supposed him to be busy in a meeting all day with his father’s lawyer.
‘But what is even more odd, Sephora, is that Mama is by the window watching out for us and she looks most upset.’
Through the glass Elizabeth Connaught was using a large kerchief to dab at her face and there were other shapes behind her. A quick burst of fear tore through worry. Was her father ill? Was Uncle Jeffrey worse?
A long time later Sephora would look back on this moment and realise that none of her concern had been for Richard himself; a telling omission, that, holding the portent of all that would come next.
But for now the footman opened the door of the carriage and they walked up the steps and into a house filled with the agony of grief.
Richard came towards her in the blue salon, his brown eyes reddened. ‘Papa died an hour ago, my dearest.’ His hand took hers as he said this and he squeezed it. ‘All I can think of, Sephora, is that I am so glad you are here with me. Together we can overcome such sadness whereas alone it is something that I might not weather.’ He almost sobbed out the final words.
He had loved his father and she had, too. The duke was a good man, a true man, a man who had been kind and honest and honourable. Tears of grief formed in her own eyes and fell unstopped and Richard simply placed his arms about her and brought her into his chest while pledging his love.
‘We have each other, my love. We can survive this. I promise. Papa would have wanted that.’
Her parents, usually stalwarts for propriety, had both looked away, lost in their own sorrow, whilst Maria stood there wringing her hands.
‘I am sure we can, Richard.’ Sephora thought her words did not contain quite the emotion her groom-to-be wanted and needed to hear, but she simply could not dredge up more.
It was all so confusing. Here, in the heart of a great emotion that should have brought them closer, she could instead feel herself spinning away, like a top on the street, the string broken and all connection lost.
She also knew she could tell them none of it, Richard, her parents, Maria, not now with the dreadful news of Uncle Jeffrey’s passing and all the associated protocols that would roll out over the next few days and weeks.
A ducal funeral.
She would have to be there for Richard. They would return to the Winbury co
untry seat, no doubt, and she would have to stand beside him and act as a suitably loving and solicitous companion.
There was no other choice.
Richard’s strong musky perfume only made her head ache.
* * *
‘I shall not listen to what you say. I do not have to walk like this or talk like this if I do not want to and I shall most certainly not be wearing that.’
Francis listened to the shouts in the hallway from the safety of his library an hour later. His cousin’s increasingly frequent temper and tantrums sat over his house like a great dark cloud, leaving him with no true idea as to how to deal with a moody, unhappy girl. As little, anyway, as the governess he had employed, he ruminated, thinking that something would have to change and quickly.
Mrs Celia Billinghurst had come highly recommended and she had the added advantage of being his late aunt’s cousin. A distant relative admittedly, but still... She had all the credentials for a credible and skilled governess and yet her small charge was simply running rings about her. He should interfere and discipline Anna, but he found himself standing still until the argument dissipated.
The day had started badly and was ending worse and all he wanted to think about was the kindness of Sephora Connaught in the garden. He shook his head and stood, remembering the touch of her hand and the shape of her lips and the pale blue eyes watching him with the same shock of connection that he himself had felt.
She was to be married. She was the product of an upbringing in the ton. She was far too good for him, with her honour and honesty and kindness. It was this reasoning that had made him walk away from the Wesleys’ town house today.
Tonight, though, there were other arguments that were more compelling. Never once had he felt so attracted to anyone—until now with the good and pale Lady Sephora Frances Connaught.
Why had he not met her before? She wasn’t newly come to the ton and he had been back from the Americas for a good seven months already. Granted, society had held less and less appeal to him, but he had not caught sight of her at any of the balls he’d attended, he was certain of it. Their paths had just never crossed.
When he’d thrown himself off the bridge he’d not truly seen her either, just a flash of blue and a startled scream of shock. Her hat had flown from her head and rolled in the wind, a small and pale piece of wispy felt and netting that held her stamp upon it.
But now, he could not get her visage out of his mind or the feeling of her against his skin. Hell. He opened the window above him wider. Deciding even that wasn’t enough, he grabbed his jacket and hat and strode off into the evening.
Outside and walking the edginess lessened. It was getting late, he knew that, but still he did not turn for home.
* * *
White’s was busy when he reached it and a stiff brandy beckoned. Inside he found Adam Stevenage drinking. Without thought he slipped into the seat opposite the lone young man and simply sat there.
‘You want to know why I asked about Hutton’s Landing?’ Despite the liquor Stevenage had consumed, he still seemed in reasonably good shape.
‘The thought did cross my mind.’
‘The man who died with you, Seth Greenwood, was my cousin.’
‘I see.’
‘And I wanted to know exactly what happened, to be able to lay him to rest, so to speak.’
‘Surely you have heard the rumours?’
‘I have, but I also think there are some things left out, my lord. I knew him well, you see, and one thing I could have said of Seth was that he was not careless. I also knew Ralph Kennings.’
That name ripped across Francis’s composure, but he sat still and listened.
‘I went to Hutton’s Landing to visit my cousin’s grave. I tried to find you there, but you had left the town. Into the bush, they said, with your gun. Ralph Kennings’s body was found a few weeks later thrown into one of the many canyons and he’d been shot three times, twice in each kneecap and once in the head by a marksman. Had you not served in the British army in such a capacity, my lord?’
‘It’s a long way to Hutton’s Landing, Mr Stevenage, and a long time ago.’
‘Let me understand it, then. For Seth’s sake.’
Francis was amazed that this talk had not made him breathless as any mention of Hutton’s Landing usually did. Perhaps it was just the sheer overtness of Stevenage’s questions, his quest for the truth overcoming everything else. Or perhaps it was just that Francis’s body had already been once through the rigours of memory today and did not have the reserves to do so again. Whatever it was, he sat back and was once again on the banks of the Flint River in Georgia, the cooling of winter in the air and the southern edge of the Appalachians blue in the distance.
‘We’d made a claim for gold and found a rich seam, Seth and I, and then found another that needed looking into. We’d fashioned a belt to put the scrapings on, one that ran up onto the river bank and saved us a lot of back-breaking work. It was going well until Kennings turned up and wanted a piece of it.’
He could see the structure in his mind, the wood and the planks, the tailings of rocks and the glinting show of gold in the sieves after the water had sluiced the mud away. ‘He knew that the venture was beginning to be lucrative and Seth was not one to stay silent about any new find.’
Stevenage shook his head. ‘That sounds like my cousin. He was always an adventurer, seeking a life far from the ease of all that he had in England.’
Francis nodded. ‘We were on the dredge when the whole structure collapsed and the next moment there were gunshots across the water. One of the bullets hit Seth in the shoulder and as it had rained the tide was rising. I held him up against me until he stopped breathing.’
‘For most of the hours of the day, I heard.’
Francis didn’t answer him.
‘They told me you had paid for his gravestone, too. My family should be thanking you.’
Adam Stevenage had more than a small resemblance to Seth and Francis relaxed back into the seat as the other continued talking.
‘I was glad to see you today, Douglas, at the Wesley luncheon, for I had been wanting to talk to you and you’re damn hard to pin down. Lady Maria told me that her sister is to be married.’
‘Indeed, she is. To the next Duke of Winbury.’
‘I know that now. She just didn’t have the look of a woman in love. At least not in love with Allerly.’
‘I think you have probably said enough, Stevenage.’
The other lifted what was left in his glass and made a toast. ‘To gold then and to the truth.’
‘Gold and truth,’ Francis gave back and drank. They could both of them break you into tiny shattered pieces because the shades inside each held so many different meanings. Seth’s boasting. Kennings’s greed. His own retribution. There was a trick to getting away from the fever before it took your soul and none of them had mastered it. But Stevenage was not finished in his confidences.
‘Winslow’s father died earlier this afternoon, Douglas. Had you heard? He’s now the new Duke of Winbury. The ton has rules for it, you see, for loving and living and dying and Lady Sephora Connaught will be caught up in it like a small leaf in a strong breeze. Hard to get away and impossible to break free.’
‘You are drunk, Stevenage. Let me take you home.’
‘You’d do that for me?’ The younger man’s dark eyes were pained, his own undisguised ghosts dancing within them.
‘I would. Come on.’
‘I am supposing that meeting you tonight nullifies the appointment Wesley instructed me to keep tomorrow at your town house?’
‘It does.’
* * *
An hour later Francis arrived home to find a small pile of stones sitting in a careful order on the sideboard. Ordinary stones found in a garden or on any city street, each polished and arranged in size and colour. Had Anna placed them thus? He picked up the biggest one and rubbed the smoothness in his palm. He’d collected rocks, too, as a child a
nd he wondered if he might be able to find the bags of his collections somewhere in the attics here. His cousin might enjoy them or she might well toss them back in his face.
He smiled at the thought and felt for the letter Sephora had sent him, liking it there in the warmth of his deep jacket pocket.
A surprising day of contrasts and truths. For the first time in a long while he looked forward to tomorrow, though the death of the Marquis of Winslow’s father worried him more than it ought to have given Stevenage’s prophecies. Would Sephora Connaught marry him out of pity? Or even duty? Outside the wind was strengthening.
A movement at the doorway had him looking up and there was Anna Sherborne, her hair tonight trimmed even shorter than he had seen it last week. She had been bathed, too, and dressed in her night attire she looked a lot younger than she usually did, although the scowl was ever present.
‘I liked your stones on the hall cabinet. Did you polish them yourself?’
The girl did not come further into the room, but stood there straddling the doorway, one foot in and one foot out ready to run, he thought, ready to flee.
His eyes glanced at the clock to one side of the room. ‘You are up very late?’
‘I never sleep very well.’ She offered this, tentatively.
‘Neither do I,’ he gave her back. ‘Sometimes I sit and just watch the moon and I find that helps.’
He leaned forward and found a jar of toffees he kept in his drawer, taking one for himself and opening the wrapper before putting it in his mouth. ‘Would you like one, too?’
He was careful in his offering, no importance at all attached to her acceptance or to her refusal. But she came forward and took a sweet, unwrapping it in exactly the same way that he had done and laying her paper down on the desk next to his.
‘There is a lot more food in this house than there ever was at my old one.’
He stayed silent.
‘Clive used to say that I was too expensive to keep and that if I had not been able to count well he would have put me out a long time ago.’
Francis stilled. ‘What did you count for him, Anna?’
